Learn to Love Again
by Moony8193
Summary: Ron goes out for a few moments one day and never returns...will Hermione ever learn to love again?


A/N: I know, I know. It's not an update on Marauder Confidential, or The Last of Lily Evans, or All My Love, Lily- but we're working on all of them. I promise. Updates will soon pop up until you're sick of us. :-) But in the meantime, I hope you enjoy this story ( from Hermione's point of view...not everyone gets that) and PLEASE review!

Disclaimer: Not mine. Except Alianne I suppose.

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It all starts with a note. A simple, innocent piece of paper left on the brown kitchen table.

Hermione-

I just went out for a minute or two- had to run an errand. Be back soon!

Love Always,

Ron

P.S. Tell Alianne I love her.

The note itself doesn't seem strange- until the end. If he's coming back soon, why should you tell your daughter he loves her? Can't he say it himself when he returns?

But he never does. The vibrant colors of fall fade into the harsh coldness of winter, which turns into colorful spring. The intense heat of summer again arrives, and still he's not home.

The watching. The waiting. It's slowly killing you. You've looked and looked, and still he hasn't arrived. Your daughter grows up, goes to Hogwarts without understanding the nature of her father's disappearance. No one can. Will anyone ever?

Alianne becomes full grown now. Her hair is red like _his_, and her skin is pale and freckly. After work one day she comes home with a ring on her finger, like you did, only to give your poor mother a heart attack. Shyly, quietly she announces her news , and you smile, and congratulate her, though deep inside, in the smallest, coldest corner of your heart, you're crying. He wouldn't come back now. You have nothing left to offer him. His little girl isn't so small. You have only yourself, which is as aged and as fragile as your own mother's with sad, brown eyes captivating the face of wrinkles- if only they were from laughter.

Your questions about his everlasting absence seem to age you as they grow in their fervor, until you look in the mirror one morning and see a worn, gray old woman. You ponder your life, how you turned out this way. It all seems to go back to that one day where the love of your life disappeared.

You decide you need a vacation and slowly arrive at a small beach on the coast. And one day when you're out walking, you see him. Walking alone, staring at the sunset. Are you hallucinating? But no. He's quietly nodding to people in greeting.

A strangled cry rises in your throat, and your heart burns with the anticipation of meeting him again, regaining the lost years of your life. But as you open your mouth to yell out, someone takes the words from your mouth.

A short, beautiful woman walks up to him with a little baby in her arms. His face glows and his eyes seem to twinkle. The way they used to when he was yours. You realize who the woman is, and what his new life contains. Why he left. Suddenly, all your questions are silenced.

You slowly turn around without talking to him, and attempt to get home as quickly as possible. Years later, you'll wonder if he saw you, or at least a flash of the woman you used to be. But you've both changed so much that you doubt it. He carries on with his new life, oblivious to the world he crumbled years ago and the hearts he broke.

You know you'll never tell anyone what happened on that sandy beach, or the way he traded this world for one with another woman in it. It's your secret, and you let people keep going with their lives. They don't deserve that pain. And in all truth, neither do you. But you'll never seem to understand that.

Until one rainy morning, you'll awaken and open a drawer, only to find his last note. The note that made you the way you are today. You'll slowly raise your eyes to the mirror and realize he's gotten what he wanted. Shouldn't you?

Now that you've seen him again, just once more, maybe you'll learn to live again. In fact, maybe, just maybe, you'll learn to love.

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Please PLEASE tell me your opinion in a review. Not that I'm desperate or anthing...

-Kristen ( with a paragraph added from Danielle)


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